


hold me now

by annamatopia



Series: burning ropes and bridges [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-16 00:46:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2249604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annamatopia/pseuds/annamatopia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tony is absolutely functioning. anyone who says otherwise is clearly an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold me now

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings: panic attacks and contemplation of suicide.
> 
> for extra feels listen to "hold me now" by red and "home" by natalie grant" while reading.
> 
> follows watch me steady.

New York fucked him up pretty badly, Tony thinks, from his slouch against the wall beside the entrance to his workshop. That fucking portal with the fucking _missile_ when he saved the entire planet and what kind of thanks does he get for that, a fifteen minute segment on good morning america or the colbert report? No thank you. He would very much like the _stark_ back in stark tower, in shiny marquee letters lit up in red and gold. And the absence of a god-sized crater in his penthouse. Or something.

Not this shit. Not fucking puking into the toilet at three am because the moment he closes his eyes he’s back _there_ , choking on recirculated oxygen with the prickling lights of a distant galaxy burned into his memory. And he can’t even take a shower to feel better because it’s fucking Afghanistan all over again. What the actual ever-loving hell.

“Jarvis,” he grits out, and his lungs are on fire and he can’t feel his hands to unclench his fists and poke in the passcode. “Override zero-six-eight-gamma.” The door slides open without a word from JARVIS and he stumbles into the workshop.

Dummy whirs over to him and chirps at Tony where he’s hunched over into the floor. He tries to say, “I’m good, I’m fine, don’t need anything--” but it comes out in one long wheeze. He curls in on himself, one hand pressed to his stomach and the other to his mouth. Everything is spinning and turning into foreign constellations and fire behind his eyelids and he just wants everything to _go away._

Dummy makes a concerned noise above him and a soft weight drops on his shoulders. “Thanks,” he mumbles. He’s reasonably sure it’s the blanket Bruce picked up somewhere that lives on the workshop couch. It’s the ugliest thing on earth with hideous tassels and colors that should never have mixed, but it’s warm and comforting.

The sound of plastic landing on the concrete floor wrenches him back to awareness and he realizes he was _almost_ asleep. Dummy peers at him, then prods the plastic closer. It’s the inhaler he keeps velcroed to the bottom of one of the tables in the furthermost corner of the shop. Since Afghanistan and the arc reactor squeezing his ribs and organs in weird ways, he’s had some trouble breathing. Not a _lot,_ just. Sometimes. The inhaler is tempting, maybe then he’d be able to _breathe_ , but the albuterol would just jack him up and keep his body shaking when he’d much rather collapse on the couch and sleep it off. If he could sleep it off. Superheroes don’t need sleep, probably. Tony is one hundred percent invested in this conviction. “No, don’t want,” he manages.

Dummy trills softly and wheels off to do _roboty_ things. Tony’s not even sure. He wants to get up and get in the suit and kick ass and save the world, or maybe collapse on the couch and break the left front leg again, but he’s glued to the floor and he hasn’t actually started the mark that would disassemble and reassemble around his body from anywhere.

It’s so ironic that the only place he feels safe is the suit, but he can’t fly in it. And oh, has he tried. He couldn’t make himself activate the repulsors, so he asks JARVIS to do it. They get up over Manhattan before he’s having a fucking heart attack and it doesn’t matter how many times JARVIS repeats his vitals on the way down, he just thinks he’s dying, _wants_ to die.

And sometimes he thinks, what if I just let the suit fall. Or let me fall without the suit. That would solve everything. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel like shit every. damn. day. He can’t even handle small children talking about new york, asking questions or thanking him or whatever it is that small children do. He used to fucking _love_ kids, just ask Pepper, and now every time he sees one he freezes like they’re going to pester him about everything that makes his stomach turn.

 _Fuck no_. That’s not happening. He has responsibilities now. And friends. They care. Maybe. Probably. The team needs him, though. At least that’s true. He’s the one who catches Cap and Barton when they jump off ridiculously high places just because they can. But. _Fuck_. He just sort of--turns into a spaghetti noodle and presses his face to the smooth floor. It feels cold against his cheek while his whole body radiates heat. He should probably take the blanket off. Would take the blanket off if he weren’t noodling all over the floor. Noodles don’t have responsibilities or irrational fears of open spaces, heights, and water.

Except _what if they don’t care_ , he thinks, a little hysterically. He has _issues_. Like a daddy complex bigger than the Chrysler building and at least one phobia for every suit of armor he owns. Everyone cares about Steve. Steve is a fluffy teddy bear and anyone who doesn’t care about him is probably a robot or a supervillain. Tony’s just a fuck-up who doesn’t deserve people who care. And really the only person who cares is Pepper, but she’s in Malibu, or maybe Colorado, doing important company stuff.

The door behind him beeps and opens again. Tony jerks away from the floor and all moping and anxiety promptly forgotten in the event of a super-spy making her presence known. “Fuck. What the. Fuck. Romanoff. _Natasha--_ what the hell!”

Fucking super-spies with super-spy training who make like cats when sneaking up on people.

“Stark.” Her hair is stick-straight and bright red and stands out against the dull grey that comprises seventy-five percent of the workshop’s space. He focuses on that instead of her face, which looks like she might be getting ready to lecture him.

Which. well. he deserves a lecture. he definitely needs to pull his head out of his ass and get his act together, people depend on him now. even if they maybe don’t like him or care about him he still has to catch teammates and make stuff for Fury and also basically be half of the financial support for the avengers--

Natasha kneels and catches his face in her hands. “Stark. What’s going on."

He’s going to give a coherent answer, he is. Nothing’s wrong. Just sitting on the floor. It was comfy. It was an experiment. And then he just starts babbling about water and the galaxy and little children and he might have said something about pepper, or maybe he was talking about that time in afghanistan where they thought pepper spray was a good method of persuasion. it’s hard to tell because the second a word leaves his mouth he’s instantly forgotten what he said.

He doesn’t know how long he talks, but by the time he winds down, he’s hyperventilating and Natasha hasn’t moved an inch. When he finally shuts his mouth, she raises an eyebrow. “I’m not Banner, Stark. I’m not exactly the best person to give you life advice.”

Tony tries to say _i don’t care_ but it rather comes out like _nnggg._

She doesn’t seem to care. “You know what I tell Clint when he feels like shit? ‘You suck it up and carry on, solnyshko.’” She presses a hand to the arc reactor and his heart rate doubles, because what the _fuck_ you don’t just go around touching people’s pacemakers, the stuff that keeps them alive-- “We are a team. You are part of our team. It’s our job to take care of each other, no?”

Tony can’t breathe again. Her hand is _right there_ and all he can see is Obadiah curved over him, smiling and twisting and shining the arc reactor right in his face, blinding, leaving white spots all across his vision. He blinks rapidly and the white spots are still there, but so is Natasha, _touching_ , and oh god she’s going to kill him--

He scrambles backwards until his back hits a table leg, sending papers and screws flying. If the arc reactor were actually a pacemaker it would be making distressed noises right now. And possibly the inhaler might have been a good idea at some point.

She slides back and lifts both hands to shoulder-height, smooth and graceful, and he thinks he made the right call on that cat metaphor. “Stark. Tony. Listen to me. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you, you hear me? We all care. You are not alone.”

He sucks in a choked breath and suddenly there are _tears_ and fucking _snot_ everywhere and he just doesn’t have the strength to sit up anymore, so he crumples back to the floor. Natasha is right there, picking up his head, and he sobs and hiccoughs alternatively into her thigh, her fingers gently stroking his hair, for a long time, until he doesn’t remember anything else.

When he wakes up, he’s tucked into a blanket burrito on the couch. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a steaming mug that smells like the herbal shit Bruce likes to make everyone drink. And Steve is curled up in an armchair that looks like it might’ve been brought down from the communal living room, scribbling in a sketchpad. There’s a faint murmur coming from the other side of the workshop, too. Blearily, he pushes himself up on one elbow, only to find Clint and Natasha perched on a bench, watching Wall-E on one of the holograms. Bruce is curled up on a beanbag chair--seriously, what the hell, where did that even come from--and Thor is reading a book (really?) in the corner on yet _another_ chair appropriated from the living room.

“What is this place, the new hangout game room? Get the fuck out, I have work to do,” Tony snaps, half-heartedly, and it comes out a little weak because there’s a dribble of snot stuck in the back of his throat.

there is an almost tangible, collective sigh from the room itself, and--

\--and he knows everything is going to be okay.


End file.
